The NYT story suggests that it’s largely due to law clerks who turn to Wikipedia to verify background facts, even though the controversy about the source has not abated. That’s also what I’ve seen recently, marking Jessup Moot factums, where Wikipedia seems to be substituting for conventional authority.

The NYT story ends with Stephen Gillers of NYU:

Stephen Gillers, a professor at New York University Law School, saw this as crucial: “The most critical fact is public acceptance, including the litigants,” he said. “A judge should not use Wikipedia when the public is not prepared to accept it as authority.”

For now, Professor Gillers said, Wikipedia is best used for “soft facts” that are not central to the reasoning of a decision. All of which leads to the question, if a fact isn’t central to a judge’s ruling, why include it?

“Because you want your opinion to be readable,” said Professor Gillers. “You want to apply context. Judges will try to set the stage. There are background facts. You don’t have to include them. They are not determinitive. But they help the reader appreciate the context.”

He added, “The higher the court the more you want to do it. Why do judges cite Shakespeare or Kafka?”